Research Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences (RIHSS), the University of Sydney.

Citation:

Computing Arts 2001 : digital resources for research in the humanities : 26th-28th September 2001, Veterinary Science Conference Centre, the University of Sydney / hosted by the Scholarly Text and Imaging Service (SETIS), the University of Sydney Library, and the Research Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences (RIHSS), the University of Sydney

Abstract:

This paper will discuss the distinctions between e|mediated and print (typo)graphic design by which its role might be reconsidered as significantly authorial, not merely formal or technical. Reproducing meaning on-screen alters conventions and assumptions which traditionally inform print-designers' attitudes to visual organisation. Not least amongst these is the increased visual significance of wayfinding requirements. Yet comfortable assumptions about (typo)graphic design as cultural producer must also change. As an ideological, elitist tool of consumerist persuasion it is not a rigorous discipline of public service. Yet ironically, not only does it exemplify the five arts of ancient rhetoric, the communicative action of the public sphere so central to democratic participation (supplanted by the rationalist abstractions of elitist philosophic discourses), but it also stands uniquely capable of addressing the paradoxical 'fissure' at the heart of contemporary rhetorical practice: the " division of the logos into form and content" (Hariman 227). Emedia enables virtually infinite and free publication, yet within technical constraints which engender possibilities for a radically analytic deconstruction of the conventional form of discursive codex-textuality. Through both static and dynamic juxtapositioning by which oscillation between formality and function may be visually instantiated it is possible to use (typo)graphic designing as a hermeneutic tool to make explicit the 'designing' consciousness behind all literacy, yet which is not normally explicit in writing. In a society saturated with remediation e|media may enable a radical, even humanistic rhetoric of (typo)graphicality.